


Long Shadows

by sophiagratia



Series: A Smaller Table and a Wine List [1]
Category: Last Tango In Halifax
Genre: F/F, Gen, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9660662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiagratia/pseuds/sophiagratia
Summary: Coping mechanisms: cuddly jumpers, late-night phonecalls.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kathryne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathryne/gifts).



> **Content advisory** : Gillian's trauma is an organizing feature of this story, though there is no explicit depiction of violence. And this is canon-compliant (-complicit, I initially wrote, which, well) and takes place after the third series, so. There's that.
> 
> The title is after [the Josh Ritter song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sisuCj20_Uk).

Gillian wakes gasping. The usual routine: terror; the thinness of the air; then the sudden silence. She feels the heavy shape that isn’t there, the weight there isn’t in the bed next to her. Robbie’s gone, she reminds herself. She threw his things away and changed the locks. Or anyway she did the long, tedious, guilt-ridden, regretful, mess-making version of that; she divorced him. Strange how easy it is, almost, to say that now. Past tense, accomplished. Fact. Anyhow he’s not here, not anymore. The whole bloody catastrophe of Robbie is behind her, she reminds herself. That’s a laugh.

He’s not here; no one is. She remembers another weight on the bed, and it helps her breathe: Caroline, Caroline was here today, or yesterday, or whatever, Caroline came for lunch and stayed in the afternoon and sat next to Gillian on her bed and listened while she talked shite for hours. She takes another deep breath. Caroline sat on her bed with her arm around her, for a long time. Then she left. Now the house is empty and strange in its emptiness. Breathe, come on, deep and slow, she tells herself, scrubbing her hands through her hair. Her father’s in Harrogate with Celia (with Caroline, she thinks). Raff and Ellie and Calam are staying the weekend with Yvonne, god help all of them. The house is empty.

She shouldn’t have insisted on being alone. Caroline had offered to stay. She should have let her. She’d welcomed the thought of an empty house, welcomed the thought of quiet and life on her own terms, for a day or two. Her time her own, her evenings her own and her days to shape as she pleases and as the farm needs, the sheep the only demanding creatures in her life for a while. She doesn’t remember the last time she could hear herself think. But night gives a different shape to the emptiness of the house, and the sound of her own thoughts is nothing worth hearing. There are other weights in the bed with her. And they close in on her, these imaginary things.

Not imaginary, she reminds herself, trying to be fair. Real enough. But past. Not here, not really, at least not now. Done and gone, done and gone, she tells herself, the old rhythm. It almost works. She scrubs her hands across her face, dares herself to look up, look around. It’s just a bedroom, she tells herself. Just a house. The familiarity of the furniture, the peeling wallpaper, softly illuminated by the light from the hall – it should be comforting, she supposes, but isn’t. _Every room in this house_ , she thinks. Just background noise. She ignores it.

One thing surprises her: Caroline left her jumper. Folded carefully over the footboard. If she noticed it when she stumbled into bed exhausted and half drunk, she’s forgotten. What she does remember is Caroline taking it off; it had been too warm, too close, and Caroline had taken off her jumper before sitting next to Gillian on the bed and laying her hand on Gillian’s shoulder. Too warm, too close. She kissed Gillian’s temple, at her hairline; she brushed Gillian’s hair back from her face, brushed her knuckles across Gillian’s cheek. Gillian sat very, very still.

Gillian looks at it for a moment, just thinking about it: Caroline left her jumper. On the one hand, Caroline left. On the other, here is Caroline’s jumper. She bends to reach for it and before she can think better of it presses it to her face. Very fine, very soft, and smells of Caroline. A sort of dusty sweet smell, posh cosmetics, her perfume. Before she can think better of it, she puts it on. It’s like a caress, the way it falls across her skin, and she shivers. Like a caress, the way it pools between her bare thighs.

She picks up her phone. Her thumb hovers over Caroline’s name for a moment, and she stares at the silly photo of Caroline with Flora, their matching puffed-out cheeks. She types quickly, hardly looking.

‘You left your jumper! x’

She doesn’t say, _so I’m wearing it, because it smells like you_. She doesn’t say, _I thought imaginary things would kill me so I put your jumper on_. She doesn’t say, _I put your jumper on and the way it clings to my hips makes me think about you touching me_. She doesn’t say, _between my thighs too_. She doesn’t say, _I wish you’d stayed, wish you’d slept with me, next to me, wish you were, still, wish I could feel and smell you next to me so instead I put on your jumper_. She says: ‘You left your jumper! x’ and it only occurs to her after she sends it that it’s three o’clock in the morning. Caroline sleeps soundly, she thinks. She won’t have woken her.

She’s spared the thought of Caroline sleeping when her phone buzzes in her hand: ‘Trouble sleeping?’

 _Yeah_ , she could say, _what else is new_. She could say, _Woke up afraid of my own house._ Or _I’m terrified of everything but what your clothing feels like on my skin_ , or _I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about you touching me_. Be nice if she could stop thinking of possibilities. She pulls her knees up under Caroline’s jumper, presses her face into her knees, and stares at her phone.

And then it starts ringing. She answers too quickly.

‘Hiya, Caz,’ she says, like it’s not three in the morning, like her heart’s not in her throat.

‘Hiya,’ Caroline’s voice less sleepy than expected. ‘All right?’

‘Yeah, you?’

‘Yeah, fine.’ Not sleepy, but tired, Caroline’s voice sounds very tired.

‘Sorry – sorry, did I wake you? Sorry,’ she says, pressing the heel of her hand hard against her forehead to keep the apology count down to three.

‘No, love,’ Caroline sighs. ‘Herself’s only just finally gone down.’ Gillian groans sympathetically, wonders if she’s overdoing it. But then Caroline says ‘How’re you really?’ and she freezes. For a horrible second that seems to go on forever she’s caught in her desperation to tell Caroline, say something about all this, the nightmares and the shaky waking and the terror of the house and – ‘Sorry,’ Caroline says, sparing her. ‘Stupid question.’

‘Yeah.’ Gillian laughs a little. ‘Bit grim, if I’m being honest.’ She pauses. ‘Put your jumper on, ’s soft,’ she says around her thumb. Her cuticles are raw again, and hurt. She tucks her hands under her knees to keep from doing it.

‘Good,’ Caroline says. Gillian thinks, ridiculously, that she can hear her smile. ‘Glad you’ve got something to keep you warm.’ Like she means it.

‘Miss you,’ Gillian blurts before she can stop herself. Stupid. Stupid! It’s been less than a day.

‘I did ask if you wanted me to stay,’ Caroline says, that sweet condescending tone Gillian bristles at and can’t help leaning into.

‘Ss-stupid, I know.’ She presses the heel of her hand against her forehead until it hurts. Don’t cry, you fucking twat, don’t cry, she thinks, but of course that only makes it worse. Then she hears a muffled little gurgle in the background. ‘Is that…?’

‘Yeah, snores like something ten times her size, doesn’t she. I’m,’ she huffs a laugh, ‘I’m still in the nursery. She finally fell asleep and I just – couldn’t fathom making it to the bedroom, somehow. Then I got your text. So here I am. Lying on the floor.’ Her tone is light, but there’s an edge on it.

‘How’re _you_ really?’ Gillian says.

Caroline laughs. ‘Yeah, all right, fair enough.’ Gillian grins and rocks a little, stops chewing on her – Caroline’s – sleeve, and tucks her hand back under her knee. ‘Losing my grip,’ Caroline says suddenly, voice tight. ‘Really, Gillian, I think I’m right up against it here sometimes.’ She sounds like she did that night, it seems so long ago, repressed and scared in Gillian’s kitchen.

‘Classic, Caz,’ Gillian snorts.

‘I – what? What d’you mean?’ That high-pitched indignant thing she does. Like a fussy posh parrot.

‘You’re having a rough go of something really ff–bloody hard, course you are, but then you – you _confess_ it, like it’s the deadliest sin, do you know you do that?’ Instantly Gillian regrets it; what if it doesn’t sound the way she meant it to, what if Caroline takes it badly, what if she’s hurt her, what if –

‘Aren’t we insightful tonight,’ Caroline grumbles, but it sounds good-natured enough. ‘Anyway it’s not stupid,’ she says more gently, and it takes Gillian a moment to catch up: ‘I miss you, too.’ A long pause. Gillian doesn’t breathe. ‘Wish you were here.’ 

‘… Lying on the floor?’ 

Caroline laughs. ‘Yeah, why not.’ Then she sniffs.

‘Wish I was too, Caz.’ Gillian shifts to lean her forehead on the cool window pane. A silence falls, and she can’t stand it. ‘What’s got our Floradora up at all hours, then?’

‘Nightmares.’ She sounds so tired.

‘That makes two of us.’ 

‘Three.’ Caroline sighs. ‘Can you imagine, what the hell on earth does a two-year-old have nightmares about, what have I –.’ She stops short.

‘She’s safe. She’s loved. She’s lucky.’ She’s said it so many times. You’re safe, she wants to say. Wants to hear, more like. She rolls her eyes, pulls her knees tighter against her chest, presses her mouth into the fine soft cashmere stretched over them.

‘This house feels so empty,’ Caroline says after a moment, sounding far away, like she doesn’t realise she’s spoken aloud. Everything Gillian can think to say to that would sound cruel.

Instead, she says, ‘You’ve never spent the night up here,’ though they both know that’s not true. ‘… Properly, I mean. You should do, sometime.’ When there’s no crisis, she means, when we’re not shitfaced, when I can stand to look at you, properly, so I can see, properly, what you look like in my kitchen in the early morning. And not be scared. ‘You should see the stars. There’s loads,’ she says softly, looking up at them. Caroline hums, like she likes the thought, and Gillian’s lost for a moment, thinking what it would be like to sit with Caroline on the bonnet of the Landie somewhere out on the tops, stargazing, Caroline’s arms around her, the warmth of her, the smell of her…

‘I’d like that,’ Caroline says softly, and Gillian nearly jumps out of her skin.

 _Twat twat twat twat_ , she thinks, and says, ‘Me too.’

‘Will you be able to get some sleep tonight?’ That sweet tone. It’s probably not condescending. It’s probably just care. That might be wishful thinking.

‘Yeah, I think, we’ll see.’ It sounds possible, almost. ‘Will you?’

‘Yeah.’ She’s a terrible liar.

‘Get into bed first.’

‘Yeah, all right. I’ll think about it.’ Her laugh. Gillian racks her mind for ways to keep her on the phone, just a little longer.

‘How’s next weekend for you?’ she says before she can think it through. Silence. ‘To come up here, I mean. If you like. You and Miss F both obviously, unless Greg’s got her. If – if that’s – if you’re not – if you like.’ _Twat!_ She presses her fingertips to her lips and concentrates very hard on shutting up.

Caroline stutters for a moment (fussy, high-pitched) and then, ‘Yeah,’ she sighs, ‘yeah, why not. That’d be – yeah. Yeah, all right. What, Friday?’

‘Yeah, stop the whole weekend if you like. Calam’ll be happy to have somebody to order about,’ Gillian says, hopes it makes Caroline smile. ‘Ellie can look after the both of them, she owes me. And we could go for a walk, a real one, like we’re always saying we’ll do.’ She gets a little lost again, at the thought of leaning into Caroline in the sort of wind that whips across Norland Moor.

‘Let’s hope the weather holds,’ Caroline says, and Gillian can’t tell whether she’s imagining that there’s something else in it, too.

‘Fuck knows, in May. Snowed last week, nineteen today. Anyway. Get up. Get undressed. Get into bed. In that order. Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Caroline says, laughing. ‘Sweet dreams your own self.’

‘Yeah. See you Friday. Sweet dreams.’

‘Yeah. All right.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Bye. Night.’

Gillian waits for Caroline to end the call and then presses her face into her folded arms, and realises she’s grinning, and can’t stop. Twat.

She looks at the time, then chucks her phone to the end of the bed. She’ll be up for the duration, that’s always how it goes. All the same, she wiggles back down under the duvet, thinking if she can organise her day in her head before it begins it’ll go easier. The list, the routine, calms her a little, but she’s distracted by the longer list of everything she’ll have to do to prepare for the weekend, to have the time to spare, the space, the food, the linens. Rehearsing it, somehow, calms her more.

She pulls the collar of Caroline’s jumper up over her nose and inhales deeply. She looks out at the stars and thinks about walking with Caroline, the route they might take across the moors. Caroline’s hair wind-whipped, her cheeks aglow, her warm hands around Gillian’s freezing ones. She thinks about stargazing, about lying back in Caroline’s arms. Sharing brandy on the couch by firelight, sitting close to her. The warmth of her. She closes her eyes and remembers Caroline’s weight in the bed next to her, Caroline’s hand warm on her shoulder. Caroline’s lips soft on her temple. Caroline’s voice…

The early dawn wakes her. Warm in sun-soaked cashmere, smelling all of Caroline, she stretches, and sits up. Morning light makes her room glow yellow. The sky is vast and blue. The day will be long and bright, and it is hers to do with as she pleases.


End file.
